Being a film geek myself, I was expecting to see a lot of myself in Scotty, but he got on my nerves, going into things that I would rarely say aloud to keep from alienating people. His tastes are also pedestrian and mainstream. The essential story is that a man gets fired from a job that he loves, is forced into another job where he is completely out of his element (in this case, an auto parts warehouse), then has an improbable ending. In F.W. Murnau's _The Last Laugh_, to which I'm surprised the film makes no explicit reference, a man is forced out of a job as a doorman that he loves to a job as a washroom attendant, in which he is ashamed, although the pay is higher. In that film, which is silent with text only in the mise-en-scène until an intertitle punctuates an improbable (in the film's own words) ending in which the man wins the lottery, which he was never shown entering. This film takes the same structure, only it's punctuated with Scotty nude and masturbating before a sink (there are several previous egregious such shots in which he has his rear end hanging out--Mr. Westby, did you really need so show more than Scotty going into the bathroom with a picture of a girl?) rather than a cinematic device. In this case, it reveals that Scotty's Hollywood ending was pure, unmotivated fantasy, even though it at least worked in a semiplausible "how."
This film is alternately cloying and cringe-worthy, with most of the cringing coming from Scotty's alienating persona, and cloying when he discusses his love of film. The biggest laugh I got was when he whispers in his neighbor's ear that Niko's ex likes scat, in reference to a scene earlier in the film in which he saw her while trying to abscond a video that she essentially stole from him.
The most likable character in the film is the beautiful Tyler Gannon, but even she is unpleasant in the way she uses Scotty, and is essentially a bahng-smoking ne'er-do-well who wants to make her boyfriend jealous. If the film were more satirical, it would work, but it seems to want us to like both Scotty and Niko, and fails miserably.
It's easy to understand why Scotty would be fired from a mainstream video store, less so that a niche video store would refuse to hire him, when he clearly has the credentials to do a job. Kim's Video in New York would probably hire this guy in a second, but this guy lives in Portland, Oregon.
Overall, the characters are incredibly flat. There is nothing to Scotty beyond his interest in film, and though Niko is a collage artist, we mostly see someone else's paintings and only get brief flashes of any collages, presumably because nothing suitable could be obtained or made in time for the shooting.
I disliked _Napoleon Dynamite_ immensely, and the comparisons between films are fairly valid, even though the likable girl in that film seemed almost out of place.
If the film had been darker or more satirical, it might have worked, but it mostly goes for cheap laughs with cardboard characters that essentially fall flat. The film is mired in mediocrity. Why didn't Scotty at least try to study film in college instead of live in a tiny apartment as a video store clerk? At least then, the temp services might offer him something more than a warehouse job, although in the current economy, probably not. The film does seem set in another time, probably the late 1990s, as DVDs are only starting to infiltrate the store. As Video Connection is not a niche store, by 2005, it would probably have abandoned all of its VHS regardless of whether a DVD of a particular title was available. These days I know of no walk-in video rental stores with the exception of a few niche shops or a Blockbuster franchise.
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